Oops, forgot the footnote.
> 2. Then (_if_ I decided to use GNU parted and a GUID Partition
> Table[1]), I'd fire up GNU parted and do "mklabel gpt".
[1] Remember, 1 TB is _not_ too big for a regular IBM/Microsoft
partition table, nor for ext3, so you can certainly, if you prefer, just
use /sbin/fdisk or /sbin/cfdisk -- and end up with an old-style
partition table rather than a GPT.
Personally, I'd still zero stuff out, before doing so, though, just to
have a clean starting point.
Apparently, it's only at the 4 TB mark that the old tools start to conk
out. But it's all academic to me, so far, because I don't own any
drives of anywhere near that size.
The other thing I meant to comment on but forgot is: Just because those
bozos at Western Digital descided to start the drive's first partition
at 32.3kB instead of at zero bytes doesn't mean you need to replicate
that peculiarity -- as you proposed to do, in one of your recent
postings.
Default partitioning of drives is often bizarre, and it's common for
space near the front of the drive to get wasted for no good reason.
Blowing everything away and re-doing it all using competently designed
Linux partitioning software allows you to lose all of those glitches.
(On rare occasions, you find upon close examination that there's a
_reason_ for some odd default partitioning. E.g., when I bought a used
Sony VAIO back in 1999, I had no idea why there was a strange little 128
MB partition of a bizarre type near the end of the drive, so I blew that
away and allocated everything to Linux data and swap partitions. Later,
I learned that the strange little 128 MB partition was a dedicated
"suspend" partition, i.e., that there was a good reason for it being
there.)